# Fictional crazy currencies? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 16, 2019, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731 "2019-08-16T11:18:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/21 "2019-08-16T17:40:55Z")
> [@WildaBeast](#): > > _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_ had “gold pressed latinum”, used by the Ferengi and other non-Federation worlds. It came in slips, strips, and bars, implying some sort of three tiered system like old British money, although I don’t think they ever established the values of each tier in relation to the others. They did, in fact…the episode Body Parts establishes it as 100 slips to a strip and 20 strips to a bar. There are larger denominations, such as the brick, that aren’t established, but those are the three standard ones. > [@](#): > > But really the “crazy” part was that in one episode it was reviled that the Ferengi consider gold basically worthless, and the valuable part was the liquid latinum contained therein. Why this is makes perfect sense within the context of the Star Trek universe - gold can be replicated, latinum, for some handwavy reason, can’t. This does create a bit of a continuity clash with the Ferengi’s first appearance, where they try to use the fact that the Federation uses gold for utilitarian purposes, rather than as objects of value, as proof that they’re insane…but we generally try to avoid thinking about that episode, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/22 "2019-08-16T17:45:30Z")
The old French currency was, in principle, no different from the duodecimal Carolingian currency used in England: one livre (pound) = 20 sous (shillings); one shilling = 12 deniers. Nothing too crazy about gold louis d’or worth 10 pounds or silver coins worth various (5, 10, 15, 30, …) round numbers of shillings. The crazy Douglas Adams currency is an obvious parody of the very real [stone money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_money). In real life, one does not need to physically “collect” the stones, which are too large to move, since everybody agrees on who owns what stone at any given time. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/23 "2019-08-16T17:46:59Z")
> [@John\_Bredin](#): > > Like the joke about what a hooker is paid to do, I imagine a _John Wick_-world bartender isn’t being paid a coin to serve a drink, he/she is being paid a coin to keep silent about what they see & hear in the bar. 🙂 No business on Continental grounds. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/24 "2019-08-16T18:17:28Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > The crazy Douglas Adams currency is an obvious parody of the very real [stone money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_money). In real life, one does not need to physically “collect” the stones, which are too large to move, since everybody agrees on who owns what stone at any given time. Bit like the gold ingots stored in a few very secure vaults in New York, London etc ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/25 "2019-08-16T18:19:24Z")
Fredric Brown, in his short-short story “Letter from a Phoenix”, recounts that the long-lived hero once lived a city where fish scales were the medium of exchange. He didn’t elaborate. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/26 "2019-08-16T18:33:50Z")
There was some terrible book I read where in the future utopia all hard currency was abolished and “money” was basically a series of IOU notes, the “basic” note was “This note promises that I will give you 1 hour of labor as you see fit”, the idea being if I bought a sandwich from a vendor I’d give him that note and sometime in the future he could call upon me to work for him for an hour to make up for it, that or you could give him something that was the equivalent of one hour of labor to make. I have no idea how the system would work in anything more complex than a basic hunter/gatherer society. Maybe because it was a utopia everyone had a lot of free time on their hands so it meant you have to get rid of it somehow? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/27 "2019-08-16T18:49:30Z")
That island (Yap or Wa’ab) is famous for its crazy currency, which goes well beyond giant stone discs. There are also: strips of cloth wrapped in betel-nut sheaths; necklaces of shells imported from other islands, two to four feet long; large shells from New Guinea, Palau, and Ponape tied on a coconut rope (this currency is commonly used for marriage money as well as buying canoes, bananas, and fish traps); and balls made of ground turmeric mixed with water. And US $. The value is determined by how much trouble it was to make or obtain the money. For example, the first batch of ninety shell necklaces brought in by a man named Angumang are the most valuable, and the stone money imported on a large scale by an Irish-American entrepreneur are worth less than the ancient ones. Figuring out exchange rates and conversion factors in your head is left as an exercise. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/28 "2019-08-16T18:58:41Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > There was some terrible book I read where in the future utopia all hard currency was abolished and “money” was basically a series of IOU notes, the “basic” note was “This note promises that I will give you 1 hour of labor as you see fit”, the idea being if I bought a sandwich from a vendor I’d give him that note and sometime in the future he could call upon me to work for him for an hour to make up for it, that or you could give him something that was the equivalent of one hour of labor to make. > > I have no idea how the system would work in anything more complex than a basic hunter/gatherer society. Maybe because it was a utopia everyone had a lot of free time on their hands so it meant you have to get rid of it somehow? Sounds like the author didn’t quite grasp the concept of a communist utopia: there is no “money”, notes, barter, specie, or otherwise. You are entitled to a sandwich by the fact that you are hungry. It also doesn’t make sense since not all labor takes equal skill or care, even comparing tasks that take equal amounts of time. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/29 "2019-08-16T20:17:47Z")
Alastair Reynolds’ _Revenger_ space opera has “quoins” which are physical objects used as money, created by aliens. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/30 "2019-08-16T20:37:00Z")
Maybe the Ferengi didn’t have replicators at the time they first met the Federation? **Asuka** , if you’re allowed to substitute other items worth an equivalent value, then when someone calls in an IOU on me, I could just give them an IOU from another person. Which means that it’s just back to being plain old money, with the only difference being that all forms of work are valued at the same hourly rate. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/31 "2019-08-16T20:40:33Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > Alastair Reynolds’ _Revenger_ space opera has “quoins” which are physical objects used as money, created by aliens. In what way are they different from the physical objects used as money on contemporary Earth? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/32 "2019-08-16T20:50:03Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > …that all forms of work are valued at the same hourly rate. That reminds me of the short film, _The Price of Life_. The fictional crazy currency was, literally, time: children are injected with nanobots that kill them after an allotted time span of however many years. If you want to pay for something, you literally give over hours, days, weeks of your life. The foolish manage to piss their time away in a few decades, while clever capitalists are effectively immortal, living centuries or millennia since “you can’t take it with you” does not apply. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/33 "2019-08-16T20:57:58Z")
Straying a bit from the topic of currencies here, but having the ability to replicate nearly any object destroys the value of pretty much everything, doesn’t it? Or at least if objects have value at all it would be based on how much energy they take to replicate, not how rare or difficult to obtain they are in nature. A filet mignon is probably no more difficult to replicate than a hamburger – it’s all the same proteins and fats after all, so they’re now worth the same amount. So if the Enterprise crew can dine on filet mignon and lobster every day if they wish, it ceases to be in any way special. Does the concept of a fancy meal, or luxury goods of any type, even exist in the Federation? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/34 "2019-08-16T21:03:42Z")
The ingredients are effectively free (I assume basic food and similar low atomic number materials do not require much energy in this fictional universe), but the creative skill of the chef isn’t. Or you can take your chances with the AI chef. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/35 "2019-08-16T21:12:18Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > Alastair Reynolds’ _Revenger_ space opera has “quoins” which are physical objects used as money, created by aliens. And they get more interesting in the second book. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/36 "2019-08-16T21:26:33Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > There was some terrible book I read where in the future utopia all hard currency was abolished and “money” was basically a series of IOU notes, the “basic” note was “This note promises that I will give you 1 hour of labor as you see fit”, the idea being if I bought a sandwich from a vendor I’d give him that note and sometime in the future he could call upon me to work for him for an hour to make up for it, that or you could give him something that was the equivalent of one hour of labor to make. > > I have no idea how the system would work in anything more complex than a basic hunter/gatherer society. Maybe because it was a utopia everyone had a lot of free time on their hands so it meant you have to get rid of it somehow? Sounds like Eric Frank Russell’s novel _The Great Explosion_, which is based on his novella “And Then There Were None.” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/37 "2019-08-16T21:27:42Z")
In the comic book _Bone_, eggs were used as currency in the valley. James Blish’s _Cities in Flight_ series has an economic system based upon germanium. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/38 "2019-08-16T21:32:14Z")
no one mentions the system in advanced dungeons and dragons… espically 1st edition? im on a tablet but you can look it up … ---
**Author:** ![Regallag\_The\_Axe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/regallag_the_axe/32/445_2.png) [@Regallag\_The\_Axe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Regallag_The_Axe)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/39 "2019-08-16T21:53:10Z")
In Terry Pratchett & Steven Baxter’s _Long Earth_ series there is an agricultural village far to the “West” where they’ve abandoned money and instead use a system of favors, as in, “You’ll owe me a favor.” It’s a small community so presumably they can all remember who is owed how much, and also know what kind of effort is required for the “favors”. > [@WildaBeast](#): > > Straying a bit from the topic of currencies here, but having the ability to replicate nearly any object destroys the value of pretty much everything, doesn’t it? Or at least if objects have value at all it would be based on how much energy they take to replicate, not how rare or difficult to obtain they are in nature. A filet mignon is probably no more difficult to replicate than a hamburger – it’s all the same proteins and fats after all, so they’re now worth the same amount. So if the Enterprise crew can dine on filet mignon and lobster every day if they wish, it ceases to be in any way special. Does the concept of a fancy meal, or luxury goods of any type, even exist in the Federation? Continuing the hijack, such technology should also make it possible to make food look and taste however you want it, but have different nutritional values. You could, if you want to, have a completely healthy diet while only eating chocolate. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731/40 "2019-08-16T22:28:19Z")
> [@Regallag\_The\_Axe](#): > > In Terry Pratchett & Steven Baxter’s _Long Earth_ series there is an agricultural village far to the “West” where they’ve abandoned money and instead use a system of favors, as in, “You’ll owe me a favor.” It’s a small community so presumably they can all remember who is owed how much, and also know what kind of effort is required for the “favors”. From what I understand, that’s exactly what the gold coins in\* John Wick\* are supposed to represent - favors. That’s why they can be used to pay for anything. I mean, favors are what the criminal economy is supposedly based on, at last in the movies. When Bonasera went to Don Corleone and asked him to deal with the boys who put his daughter in the hospital, the Don didn’t say, “OK, you owe me one (1) fixed-up body of one dead son, to be determined later”; instead, he told him, basically, that he owned him a favor. If \*the Godfather \*had existed in the \*John Wick \*universe, the undertaker would have given the Don a gold coin. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-crazy-currencies/838731.md?page=3)